


Rings of Ink

by cordelianoir



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Bittersweet, F/M, Geralt and Jaskier don't just talk it out like grownups, Geralt learning to be a Dad, Geralt's unhealthy internal monologue, Heartbreak bands, Jaskier being a Dad from Day one, M/M, a harpy dies, but that's it, cannon-typical witchering, it just didn't fit, love and heartache, sorry - Freeform, the wider and darker the band, the worse the heartbreak, when you break some one's heart a mark appears on your skin, yen doesn't get much love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-02-23 14:44:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23713159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordelianoir/pseuds/cordelianoir
Summary: Most humans over the age of ten had a thin band or two of black ink around their arms, brought on by the dozens of little heartbreaks that people couldn’t seem to avoid. A lover spurned, a mother disappointed, a child abandoned. Anything that broke another emotionally could result in a band around the arm of the person responsible.Geralt had seen truly awful bands, whole arms painted black on babes whose mothers had died in childbirth—babes that wore their father’s heartbreak on their skin for their whole lives. Or callous young ladies who strung men along to their whims who wore the dark black bands around their arms as badges of honor.But Geralt had never seen a band on a Witcher.---AU inspired by @hey-there-hunter and @elpiething on tumblr: Whenever you break someones heart a dark band inks itself on your arms. The thickness of the band depends from how strong were the feelings.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 34
Kudos: 499





	Rings of Ink

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks to @hey-there-hunter and @elpiething for the idea for the fit and the gorgeous artwork which you can find here: https://hey-there-hunter.tumblr.com/post/614500715624382464/m-e
> 
> I really appreciate their willingness to let me run with the idea :) I saw the lovely artwork and just couldn't help myself from writing... good lord, nine pages?
> 
> I kept this fic very episodic with just brief glimpses into this world and the interaction of the characters in it. That was the only way to actually keep this thing a manageable length. There's also a tiny call out to the games at the end if you squint.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

It was dark by the time Geralt removed his bracers for the day. Everything had royally gone to shit. The two people he had most wanted to hold close were gone. He’d made them leave and in less than five minutes, he had ruined his entire life. No dragon. No Yennefer. No Jaskier. Just a surly old Witcher, alone as he deserved to be.

Geralt didn’t build a fire. He wouldn’t freeze without one, and truthfully he didn’t feel like he deserved the comfort one would bring. As a result, he almost missed the thick black bands that encircled his forearms just above the wrist.

His eyes knew what they were, even as his mind refused to accept it.

Most humans over the age of ten had a thin band or two of black ink around their arms, brought on by the dozens of little heartbreaks that people couldn’t seem to avoid. A lover spurned, a mother disappointed, a child abandoned. Anything that broke another emotionally could result in a band around the arm of the person responsible.

Geralt had seen truly awful bands, whole arms painted black on babes whose mothers had died in childbirth—babes that wore their father’s heartbreak on their skin for their whole lives. Or callous young ladies who strung men along to their whims who wore the dark black bands around their arms as badges of honor.

But Geralt had never seen a band on a Witcher.

Geralt had never really given it much thought. He’d never considered that anyone could care enough about a witcher to leave a mark. Or, even if they did, the mutagens in his blood would stop the ink before it settled on his skin.

But there was no denying the two bands that settled like cuffs on the skin usually covered by his shirtsleeves and bracers.

Geralt felt winded, as if he’d received a sharp kick to the sternum. But there was no assailant to blame apart from his own callousness. Slowly, he brought his wrists into a sliver of moonlight to inspect the bands more closely.

The one on his right wrist was thinner, only a little wider than the width of his thumb. But the other… The other band was at least double that width. He wasn’t sure which band belonged to Yennefer and which belonged to Jaskier. He didn’t know which way would be worse: the heartbreak from a wish being greater or the heartbreak of a friend undeservedly rebuked.

He deserved these marks of shame. He deserved to show the world that he was not the hero Jaskier made him out to be, but rather a monster only capable of inflicting pain. He knew that.

He also fell asleep curled around his own arms, unable to fill the sinkhole that had appeared in his chest.

* * *

Jaskier had never exactly heard of someone breaking their own heart, but it was the only explanation he had for the thick band of black that bloomed over his forearm the day after the dragon hunt. Meletele knew that it wasn’t Geralt’s heart that had broken.

The bard quickly buttoned the cuffs of his shirt to hide the new marks from the dwarves as they made their way down the mountain together. It wasn’t until almost a week later, at an inn far away from that wretched mountain, that he was able to examine the new band in privacy.

The tub was lukewarm at best, but it still felt good to soak after more than a week on the road. It felt less-good to look at the new band decorating his left forearm. It wasn’t the only band there, not by a long shot, but it was certainly the thickest.

Jaskier didn’t think he was a cruel man. He certainly never went out with the intention of breaking anyone’s heart. But he’d had a rich life with lots of fine bedmates. There had been more than a dozen little heartbreaks over the years, each of which left a thin band of black somewhere on his forearms. The first had been from his parents, a little bolder than most of the later ones, when Julian had announced his intention to renounce his title and live as a common bard. At just under the width of a bean, those had been his thickest marks for years. Now they looked weak and inconsequential beside the wide black cuff circling his forearm.

He had been in love with Geralt for years. It had come on slowly at first, admiration turning into adoration without him noticing. The lust had always been there of course, but the love had been harder to pin down, more unexpected. Jaskier had thought he might be the one to leave the first black band on Geralt. He hadn’t considered the whole thing backfiring.

But of course it had. It had been Jaskier’s own fault, he’d broken his own heart the moment he’d fallen in love with a Witcher. Geralt might not be emotionless as the tales claimed, but he certainly wasn’t good at dealing with them. Heartbreak had always been the inevitable outcome.

* * *

Ascended sorceresses didn’t get bands. Yennifer knew this as deeply as she knew what had been cut from her in Aretuza. But she felt it nonetheless. Just above her left wrist, the skin was ever so slightly raised. A cuff as wide as her hand that wrapped around her wrist where a band might have formed were it not for her physical transformation all those years ago.

Now that she knew what to feel for, Yennifer could recognize dozens of thin bands up and down her arms. Scores of tiny heartbreaks she had never even noticed. She noticed Geralt’s mark. The band around her wrist was as wide as her hand and rougher than the skin around it, a physical manifestation of the Witcher’s affection. Manufactured by a djinn, but affection nonetheless.

A weaker woman might have gone back. Might have made a portal straight to the man who cared for her with a depth and desire strong enough to leave a mark like that. But Yennifer was not weak. She was nothing if not resolute in her decision.

And if, in the coming weeks, she noticed her fingers drifting back to her left wrist in the quiet moments between spells… well that was no one's business but her own.

* * *

Ciri claimed that the three black bands on her left forearm had been there since before she could remember. She didn’t say it outright say it, but Geralt surmised that it was her parents’ greif over having their child promised to a Witcher.

He kept his own forearms covered around her and wondered why Pavetta, Calanthe and Doony’s greif had not touched his skin when Yennifer and Jaskier had left their marks so definitively. Why hadn't the dozens of people who had been impacted by his actions over the years left him marked? Why had all the heartbreak from the people who blamed Geralt for their loved ones’ deaths not appeared on his skin?

Geralt knew the answer—Destiny.

That didn’t mean he had to like it.

* * *

The out of the way little town where he and Ciri had stopped for the night wasn’t exactly freindly toward Witchers. They’d split up reluctantly so that Ciri could secure them a room without the price being inflated by Geralt’s amber eyes. He’d pressed a small dagger into her hand and reluctantly let her go. He watched her eyes turn flinty grey with determination and her back straigten before she nodded and walked into the town a little ways ahead of him.

Geralt had purchased enough food to last the two of them a week and stabled Roach. But when he aproached the split-rail fence where they had agreed to meet, he found her not alone. He could see the little dagger in her hand, at the ready, but still concealed for now.

The Witcher was a heartbeat away from drawing his sword when he recognized the lute slung over across the man’s back.

Geralt slowed and forced himself to listen over the rapid thrum of his own heartbeat.

“Are you waiting for someone?” Geralt heard Jaskier’s voice ask.

“Yes,” Ciri responded stiffly. They’d gotten rid of that bright blue cloak, hiding the distinctive color away in Roach’s saddlebags, but her posture still reeked of nobility.

“That’s good to hear,” Jaskier said gently, taking a step back away to lean nonthreateningly agianst the fence. “This is a dangerous area to be traveling alone.”

Geralt felt something like a tug just under his lowest set of ribs. The skin under his shirtsleeves itched.

“Yes, well, thank you for your concern,” Ciri continued, obviously trying to get Jaskier to leave.

With a sigh, Geralt pushed back the hood of his cloak and made his steps loud enough that the two humans would notice his aproach.

Ciri, who was facing him, looked up first. Her face showed an obvious wave of relief at seeing him. They’d have to work on that.

Jaskier turned around then. Geralt managed to keep his expression impassive, but Jaskier had always worn his heart on his sleeve. A dozen feelings flashed across the bard’s face before he schooled it into something resembling a smile.

“Geralt!” he greeted with a shadowed verions of his usual cheerfulenes. “It’s been a while.”

“So it has.”

“You two know eachother?” Ciri piped up, unconciously stepping closer to Geralt’s side.

“Yes,” Geralt confirmed, shifting the weight of Roach’s saddlebags where they were slung over his shoulder. “This is Jaskier, the bard.”

“Oh!” Ciri’s face lit up. Now that she wasn’t wary of the stranger, she looked at Jaskier a little more closely. He wasn’t dressed as vibrantly as usual, instead dressed in a dark blue-grey tunic that was dusted from the road. “Geralt’s told me about you.”

Jaskier’s eyebrows shot up and his eyes flitted to Geralt for confirmation. Geralt coudln’t repress his wince. Yes, now that he thought about it, maybe he’d told the princess one too many tales of how he’d spent the last twenty years wandering the continent. And maybe one too many of those stories intimately involved Jaskier. And of course she’d wanted to know about Yennifer and how they’d met, and that involved Jaskier too. Most things in his life involved Jaskier at this point if Geralt were honest.

Luckily, Jaskier’s bright blue eyes had moved away from the witcher. Unluckily, they had settled on Ciri.

“I suppose that makes you Princess Cirilla,” Jaskier said quietly.

Ciri’s face suddenly became even paler than usual.

“Fiona in public,” Geralt growled.

The bard blinked up at him once before he seemed to conenct the dots. He looked around rather conspicuously and nodded, luckily there wasn’t really anyone close enough to have heard Ciri’s full name.

“Of course,” Jaskier said and straigtened his doublet.

“Well, I don’t want to impose,” Jaskier said with the forced little smile he only wore when he was saying something that he didn’t mean.

“Have dinner with us.”

The words were out of Geralt’s mouth before he could stop them. It was more of a demand than a request, but it softened the lines around Jaskier’s mouth and turned the smile just a touch more genuine.

“Of course,” Jaskier said soflty before adding, “I’m sure you two must have been having quite the adventure.”

* * *

Jaskier traveled with them after that.

Slowly, he was returning to his usual, chatty self. He was good for Ciri, singing and telling her stories about her mother, grandmother and any other brave warrior women he could think of. He peppered in a liberal amount of Geralt’s own triumphs as well, but usually when Geralt was out hunting and couldn’t correct the bards many artistic liberties.

The three of them were almost to the pass aproaching Kaer Morhen when the harpy attacked. It must have been desperate for food to have ventured this close to the road while hunting.

Geralt was just returning with two rabbit carcasses, all he could find in the early snowfall, and was too far away to intervene when the creature came careening out of the trees toward Ciri. With a swift push, Jaskier managed to get the princess out of the Harpy’s path, but insodoing, ended up taking the brunt of the creature’s attack with his own body.

Ciri’s scream knocked the creature off the bard almost as soon as it landed and Geralt’s sword sliced through the creature’s neck before it could even right itself. Breathing heavily and covered in blood, he turned back to find Jaskier alive but bloody and clutching his ears and staring wide-eyed at Ciri.

Ah, yes. They may have neglected to mention that little detail to Jaskier.

But he’d been at Pavetta’s betrothal. He shouldn’t be so shocked.

Geralt ignored the bard’s obvious confusion and fell to his knees to inspect his wounds.

With a sigh of releif, he noted that most of the attack had landed on the edge of the bard’s padded winter doublet. The shoulder of the garment was ruined and there was a nasty scratch over the man’s upper arm, but it would heal.

With a grunt, Geralt took out his knife and sliced away the ruined section of cloth. Jaskier gave an indignant yelp, but at least it took his attention off Ciri.

“Don’t—” Jaskier managed to get out before Geralt ripped away the shirtsleeve to get at the wound.

The Witcher had seen the other man’s bare arms often enough to know what they looked like. He knew the number and width of the bands on the pale arms as if they were his own. The thick cuff around the center of his forearm was new.

Geralt felt the sharp tug under his ribs again and the breath catch in his throat. He wasn’t sure how, but he knew, without a shadow of a doubt that he had left that mark on Jaskier’s skin. He had sullied this incredible man’s skin with the heartbreak he couldn’t control. His own failings had left Jaskier with a mark so wide and dark that no one who saw it would be able to miss the pain and longing there.

The witcher swallowed and forced his hands into action. Forced himself to wash the wound and use the bard’s ruined sleeve as a makeshift bandage.

Jaskier wasn’t looking at him when he finished. He mumbled his thanks before shrugging out of his doublet and pulling out their emergency mending kit to see if anything could be done to repair it.

Ciri was trying to politely not look at Jaskier’s bared arm, but the tention was palpable in the air of the camp.

“Ciri,” Geralt called softly, “could you gather some more wood for the fire?”

Ciri’s eyes flitted pointedly to the pile of sticks already set aside for that purpose, but didn’t protest.

“Don’t go too far,” he reminded, but she waved him off and nodded, heading into the nearby trees and pulling out her daggar.

Something vital in Geralt’s chest seemed to be attempting to climb out of his ribcage. He turned toward Jaskier and pointedly made some twigs snap under his feet as he walked across the clearing toward the bard.

Jaskier didn’t look up, his gaze very pointedly fixed on his shredded doublet.

Geralt took a seat on the fallen tree beside him and floundered for something to say. For once the silence felt anything but peaceful and Jaskier obviously had no intention of filling it.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last.

Jaskier just shrugged, “It’s just a coat, it’ll mend.”

Geralt scoweled at the bowed head.

“Not the about the fucking—” Geralt sighed and ran a hand over his face. This is why he prefered to let Jaskier do the talking, he was never any good at saying what he meant.

In the flickering firelight, Geralt tugged off his bracers, shoving up his sleeves and bareing the two thick bands around his forearms. He felt Jaskier still, his sewing forgotten, as his eyes fell on the marks.

“I’ve been an ass,” Geralt said instead. “It wasn’t fair, or kind, or any of the other things you pretend I am for your songs. But you didn’t deserve it. I’m sorry I marked you. I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry you’ve had to live with my failings on your skin. I’d take it back if I could—”

He was silenced from his badly-made appology by Jaskier’s fingers skating gently across the thicker of the two bands. Geralt wondered how he’d ever not known which band belonged to which person. Jaskier’s touch made it oh so clear that he recognized his own heartbreak in the bottomless black of the thicker band.

“What do you mean?” he said at last, voice barely audible over the crackling of the fire. “What do you mean you marked me?”

Geralt scowled. His own hand wrapped around the thick black mark on Jaskier’s forearm.

“I’m sorry.” Geralt repeated. It was all he could do.

Jaskier met his eyes then, finally. His bright blue eyes looking like still pools of water in the firelight. Then he huffed out a little, half-hysterical laugh.

“You? All this time I thought I was the only man on the continent that had manged to break his own heart.”

Geralt smoothed his fingers over the skin in what he hoped was a soothing gesture.

“You don’t hate me?” Jaskier said and Geralt never wanted to hear him sound so small and unsure again.

The witcher shook his head emphatically.

“I could never.”

“And you don’t wish for Destiny to take me off your hands?” Jaskier’s tone was obviously aiming for levity, but it missed by a mile.

“No. It was a stupid fucking thing to say.”

Jaskier nodded and gently, leaned closer so that he could rest his forehead to Geralt’s.

* * *

Heartbreak bands never truly dissapear. But it turned out that they do fade over time. Like shirts that have been laundered until they are soft and comfortable, the black faded to a soft charcoal, then to an even lighter grey.

The first time Geralt instructed Jaskier on how to disarm a man with a daggar after a long day of training Ciri, the inky black faded a bit. When the sat closer together at the long wooden table surrounded by Wolf-School Witchers and one tired thirteen-year-old girl, it faded a little more. When Jaskier gathered up his courage to twist their fingers together in front of the fireplace in the library while Vesimir read aloud out of an imporant tome of bests, it faded more still. When Geralt pulled the other man close on one of the tourrets and pressed a desperate kiss agasint the bards lips, they faded. When Jaskier abandoned the guest room for Geralt’s (simply because it was warmer, of course, Ciri), they faded. Over the years, the bands of heartbreak from that day on the dragon hunt faded as the ache of it lessened, though the scars remained—on the heart and on the skin.

Many years later, at a vinyard chatau, a Witcher and a bard, now both sporting silver-white hair, curled up together overlooking the land and sipping glasses of the harvet from years past. They both wore their shirtsleeves rolled up when they went to inspect the vines, dull grey bands of long-passed heartache on display for Lambert or Ciri or whoever might happen by. They sat with their legs tangled up and enjoyed the sunset together, happy with the life they’d built.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed reading! Once again, if you missed it, you can find the gorgeous artwork that inspired this fic here: https://hey-there-hunter.tumblr.com/post/614500715624382464/m-e as well as follow the creators of this verse there. 
> 
> I also have another Witcher AU which is longer if you're like my writing and want to read more. 
> 
> If you feel so inclined, I would be overjoyed if you left a comment. They really do make my day.


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